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Author of the chapter David Nicholls Title of the chapter Avant-garde and experimental music Editor/s David Nicholls Title of the book The Cambridge History of American Music ISBN 0521454298 Publisher Cambridge University Press Place of publication Cambridge, UK Year of publication 1998 Chapter/Page numbers 517-534

i g .

Avant-garde and experimental music

D A V I D N I C H O L L S

Although the terms "avant-garde" and "exper imental" are of ten used to

categorize radical composers and their works, i t has been noted tha t

" 'avant garde' remains more a slogan than a defini t ion" (Griffiths 1980, p.

743) and tha t " 'experimental music ' is ill-defined and the concept i t is used

to describe is vague" (Rockwell 1986, p. 91). (In fairness to Rockwell, he

does also stress the "bolder , more individualistic [and] eccentric" aspects

of experimentalism, which suggest an "untrammeled willingness to probe

the very limits of music" [p. 91].) But equally problematically, there is no

clear demarcation line between the composers and repertories to which

the terms are usually applied, or between the terri tory supposedly

described hy combining the two terms and that inhabited by other species of

contemporary composer. Thus Ru th Crawford (Seeger) (1901-1953) and

George C r u m b (born 1929) might be thought of as either avant garde or

experimental, while Steve Reich (born 1936) and Philip Glass (born 1937)

have - over a twenty-five year period - moved imperceptibly f rom the

experimental fr inge to the pos tmodern mainstream, wi thou t having com-

promised their work to any substantive degree.

These problems of definition are at least partly at tr ibutable to two

linked paradoxes. First, almost all forms of radicalism will, as a funct ion of

t ime, progressively degenerate into normality and acceptability: today's

novelty can easily become tomorrow's cliche. Second (and more impor-

tant), radicalism does no t txist perse, bu t rather is a funct ion of difference

when measured against contemporaneous norms. Thus , in the context of

twentieth-century musical modernism, it can push the boundaries of

acceptance no t only forward (into "advanced" territory), bu t also back-

ward (into apparent conservatism) and outward (into the exploration of

musics other than those of the Eurocentric art music tradition). These

three shades of radicalism might be termed prospective, retrospective, and

extraspective.

N o n e of this, however, is of much help in determining what avant-garde

[517]

5I8 DAVID NICKOLLS

music and experimental music actually are. Thus the present chapter pro-

ceeds f rom the assumption tha t , at any given t ime, bo th exist at the fore-

f ron t of contemporary music thought and practice (and are therefore de

facto likely to dis turb rather than reassure, challenge rather than comfort);

and that wha t distinguishes them is the extent to which they take the Euro-

centric art music tradit ion as a reference point . Thus , very generally, avant-

garde music can be viewed as occupying an extreme position within the

tradi t ion, while experimental music lies outside it. The distinction may

appear slight, b u t when applied to such areas as insti tutional suppor t ,

"official" recognition, and financial reward, the avant garde's links wi th

tradit ion - however tenuous - can carry enormous weight .

B e f o r e W o r l d W a r I I

Although the compositional roots of Charles Ives (1874-1954) lie to a

considerable extent in the European Romant ic tradit ion (see chapter 9), he

also "deserves pride of place as one of the first composers of experimental

music" (Burkholder 1990, p. 50). In general terms, Ives's experimentalism

manifests itself in two ways. First, he wrote a number of overtly experi-

mental pieces, in which he tried ou t particular compositional techniques

including extreme chromaticism, tone clusters, polytonality, polyrhythm,

polymetre, polytempo, stratification, and spatial separation. The pieces

containing these experiments range f rom psalm settings and other quasi-

religious works (mainly dating f rom the 1890s on) th rough to secular

instrumental pieces (mostly wri t ten after 1905). No tewor thy examples of

the former include Psalm 24 and the second of the Three Harvest Home

Chorales-, and of the latter From the Steeples and the Mountains, The

Unanswered Question, and/w re con moto etal. Second, Ives wro te music in an

unprecedentedly wide range of styles, f rom the popular th rough to the

recherche. Equally (if no t more) importantly, he sought to integrate these

varied styles into a pluralistic whole, most successfully in such "late"

works as the Second String Quar te t , Piano Sonata N o . 2 {Concord, Mass.,

1840-1860), and Fourth Symphony.

Despite the apparently early dates of many of Ives's innovations - as well

as the precursorial mantle placed on him by Henry Cowell (1897-1965)

and others - the fact remains, however, tha t the vast majori ty of Ives's

works only received their first performances many years after their

composit ion. Fur thermore , Ives revised many of his pieces before their

premieres, which has led, in recent years, t o a robust debate revolving

Avant-garde and experimental music 519

around issues of deliberate deception and historical precedence. ̂ Thus

public awareness of Ives's music - dat ing initially f rom the 1920s, and at

least partly resulting f rom his private publication and distr ibution of the

" C o n c o r d " Sonata and 114 Son£S - was contiguous wi th tha t afforded to a

later generation of radical composers, including Cowell, Crawford, and

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971).

In the first quarter of the twent ie th century, then , most musical radical-

ism on the East Coast of America was actually centered on the activities o f

such recent European immigrants as Leo Ornstein (born 1894), E. Rober t

Schmitz (1889-1949), and Edgard Varese (1883-1965). In the 1910s,

Russian-born Ornstein shocked audiences (and inspired Cowell) wi th his

chamber music, including the infamous WildMen^s Dance Op. 13 N o . 2,

(c. 1915). Both Schmitz and Varese hailed f rom France; and bo th founded

organizations which promoted the cause of modern music. The latter 's

International Composers ' Guild (operative 1921-1927) gave per-

formances of works by such contemporary European and American

composers as Berg, Cowell, Hindemi th , Colin McPhee (1900-1964),

Ruggles, Schoenberg, and Webern. Varese's own composit ions f rom this

period - notsbXy Ammques (. '1918-1921), Hyperprism (1922-1923), Inte-

grales (1924-1925) 2L!\d Arcana (1925-1927) - excited much interest and

exerted much influence through their striking t imbres and use of percus-

sion. Schmitz 's Pro-Musica Society (founded in N e w York in 1920, as the

Franco-American Musical Society) was less adventurous in its pro-

gramming, b u t among its many promotions over a twelve-year period

were the first performances of Ives's T^ree Quarter-tone Pieces in 1925 and

the first two movements of the Fourth Symphony in 1927. These activities

can be seen as part of an emerging modernis t movement , almost exclu-

sively prospective in spirit and celebrating the generally positivist mood

of the times. Another example is the early work of George Antheil

(1900-1959) which includes the Airplane Sonata (1921) and the Ballet

mkanique (1923-1925). Somewhat paradoxically, though, AntheiPs repu-

tation was made - and his most advanced pieces first performed - in

Europe, where he received strong suppor t f rom Ezra Pound, among

others.

On America's West Coast , meanwhile, there had been complementary

developments. In the fall of 1914, Henry Cowell had begun a series of

weekly meetings wi th the then Chair of Music at Berkeley, Charles Seeger

1. As noted in chapter 9, the "standard" datings of Ives's works are given in AmeriGrove-, the controversy surrounding those dates is summarized in Burkholder 1995, pp. 9-11.

5 2 0 D A V I D N I C H O L L S

(1886-1979), at which issues in contemporary music were discussed. By

the t ime of the first meeting, Cowell had composed over a hundred pieces

in a plethora of styles. In distinct contrast to the Eurocentric East Coast

radicals - w h o were all to some extent indebted to Stravinsky and other

European modernists - Cowell was fully aware o f " . . . the rich variety of

oriental musical cultures that existed in the San Francisco Bay area [and

had grown] up hearing more Chinese, Japanese, and Indian classical music

than he did Western music" (Saylor 1986, p. 520). W h a t he lacked, though,

was a (contemporary Western) context wi thin which to develop his ideas;

this Seeger provided. The next five years might be likened to a research

program, in which Cowell and Seeger explored the intellectual limits of

music at tha t time. The results included the first draf t of Cowell 's impor-

tant bookjN^ew Musical Resources (published in revised form in 1930) and a

number of increasingly radical composit ions, including the String Quar te t

N o . i (April 1916), the Quartet Romantic (September 1917) and the Quartet

Euphometric (September 1919).

These three works all show the influence of Seeger's theory of dissonant

counterpoint , in which dissonance (initially of pitch, though ultimately of

all o ther parameters as well) rather than consonance was the norm.

Through Cowell, o ther composers - including Ruggles and John J. Becker

(1886-1961) - were introduced to its disciplines, as is shown, for instance,

in Ruggles's Portals (1925) and his magnum opus, Sun-treader (1926-1931).

Cowell 's music, however, continued to be wri t ten in a wide variety of

idioms, as a selection of his piano works demonstrates. Fabric (September

1920) adheres to the norms of dissonant counterpoint ; Dynamic Motion

(November 1916) md Antinomy (December 1917) are astonishing for the

violence of their tone cluster dissonance; The Tides ofManaunaun (July

1917) also features clusters, bu t in accompaniment of a modal, folk-like

melody; both The Aeolian Harp {c. 1923) and The Banshee (February 1925)

employ the strings of the piano, b u t to qui te different (programmatic and

timbral) ends: the former is sweet and tonal, the latter an evocation of the

wailing spirits of Gaelic folklore.

John Cage (1912-1992) once described Cowell as " the open sesame for

new music in America" (Cage 1961, p. 71). In 1925 Cowell became a board

member of Varese's (East Coast) International Composers ' Guild and

founded his own (West Coast) N e w Music Society. Following the demise

of the ICG, Cowell in effect ran its successor - the Pan American Associa-

tion of Composers (operative 1928-1934) - during Varese's long sojourn

in France (1928-1933). Thus , until 1936, Cowell presided over the most


impor tant period in American musical radicalism's first wave. The con-

certs of the N e w Music Society and PAAC were seminal in bringing new

pieces to public a t tent ion, in places as far apart as San Francisco, N e w York,

Havana, Paris and Budapest. Founded in 1 , Cowell 's journal Mzwz'c

Quarterly provided a unique outlet for contemporary scores. And, like the

concerts and the periodical,Cowell 's 1933 sym^osmmAmerican Composers

on American Music championed all those w h o stood consciously apart f rom

the Eurocentric mainstream, including Ives (who provided Cowell wi th

extensive financial backing for several of these enterprises), Crawford,

Ruggles, Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961), and Dane Rudhyar

(1895-1985). The range of music that benefited f rom these various initia-

tives was impressive. The PAAC tackled the Eurocentric establishment on

its home ground, promot ing concerts on the East Coast of America and in

Europe. Tha t given in Paris on June 6 , 1 9 3 1 , was typical: conducted by

Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995), it included Cowell 's Synchrony (1930),

Ives's First Orchestral Set (in its new chamber orchestra version), Ruggles's

Men and Mountains, and pieces by Amadeo Roldan (1900-1939) and

Adolph Weiss (1891-1971). The N e w Music Society znANewMusic Quar-

terly were more catholic in their tastes, though still rather biased toward

American radical composers. Thus while new European composit ions

were tolerated, the names encountered most of ten are those of Cowell and

his closest confederates - Becker, Carlos Chavez (1899-1978), Crawford,

Ives, Riegger, Rudhyar, Ruggles, and Varese - as well as such less cele-

brated talents as Ray Green (1908-1997) and William Russell

(1905-1992).

The radical opt imism of the period following World War I found its

antithesis, however, in the legacy of pessimism and unemployment

bequeathed by the Wall Street Crash. Although opportuni t ies for per-

formance and publication appear - if anything - to have increased dur ing

these years, many composers began to question the relevance of their

earlier, u l t ra-modern, aesthetic beliefs. I t is significant, for instance, that

Varese completed no new pieces during the decade bounded by Density

21.^ for solo flute (1936) and the unpublished, speculative. Etude pour

Espace (1947). Ruth Crawford - whose brilliant essays at the farthest

reaches of dissonant counterpoint include the String Quar te t (1931) and

the Three Songs (1930-1932) - dallied wi th political texts, in the TwoRicer-

cari (1932-1933), before becoming involved in folk music. Her polemical

views were shared wi th other members of the left-wing Composers ' Col-

lective of N e w York, including Copland and Charles Seeger. Cowell, too.


v/as active in the Collective for a t ime; bu t the principal feature of his work

f rom the late 1920s onward is an increasing preoccupation wi th trans-

ethnic matters. His earlier music - like that of Charles Griffes (1884-1920)

and Henry Eichheim (1870-1942) - had already shown a more-than-casual

interest in other cultures. Cowell did not , at this stage, match the wander-

lust of either McPhee or Eichheim; bu t the Depression years certainly

coincided wi th a deliberate a t tempt to engage at an intellectual level wi th

the principles of non-Western musics. Thus f rom the late 1920s, Cowell

regularly taught a course on "Music of the Peoples of the World," while he

spent 1931-1932 in Berlin, s tudying comparative musicology, Indian

music and Javanese music. He subsequently followed his own advice -

given in the article "Towards Neo-Primit ivism" (Cowell 1933b) - by

drawing on " those materials common to the music of all the peoples of the

world [and building] a new music particularly related to our own century."

The result was a series of distinctly transethnic pieces, including Ostinato

Pianissimo (1934), the United Quartet (1936), and Pulse (1939). To the lay

observer, these and other developments in Cowell 's work of the m i d - to

late 1930s might have seemed regressive; b u t in fact they played an impor-

tan t part in setting the agenda for the second great wave of American

musical radicalism.

From the 1940s to the 1960s

The predominant thrus t in avant-garde and experimental music until the

mid- i930S had been assuredly prospective; bu t f rom tha t poin t on it

became increasingly balanced by retrospective and extraspective tenden-

cies. Cowell 's compositions during the last twenty-five years of his life

cont inued, in par t , to employ advanced techniques. These include tone

clusters - for instance in the Trio in Nine Short Movements (1965) - and exam-

ples of the variable forms first encountered in the Mosaic Quartet (1935)

and the lost Sarabande (1937). But the majori ty of his music after 1940

was stimulated by traditions other than those of his own t ime and/or

place, transethnic influences being joined by those of earlier music and of

vernacular music. Among his works are a series of Hymn and Fuguing

Tunes (1943-1964); Saturday Night at the Firehouse (1948); Persian Set

(1956-1957); Symphony N o . 13 {Madras) (1956-1958); and two concertos

for koto and orchestra (1961-1962; January 1965).

Cowell 's inclusivity of approach set an impor tan t example t o younger

composers and - in some cases - had a direct influence on their work. At


the more overtly experimental end of the spectrum, extreme rhythmic

complexity was spiced wi th jazz by Conlon Nancar row (1912-1997),

whose mature o u t p u t is indebted to Cowell 's suggestion that intricate

rhythms "could easily be cut on a player-piano roll" (Cowell 1930, p. 65).

In the mid-i930S, Cage and Lou Harrison (born 1917) studied wi th both

Cowell and Schoenberg, which led to an unusual combinat ion in their

work of (traditional) discipline wi th (radical) f reedom. Thus contrapuntal

pieces were succeeded by works for percussion and for altered piano. The

percussion music of Cage and Harrison - mainly wr i t ten in the late 1930s

and early 1940s - reflects a general proclivity for such resources at this

time: impor tan t earlier examples include Varese's lonisation (1931),

Cowell 's Ostinato Pianissimo, and pieces by several Latin American compo-

sers. Harr ison 's tack piano (in which t h u m b tacks are pushed into the

hammers) and Cage's prepared piano (in which mutes of various kinds are

applied to the strings) are conceptually beholden to Cowell 's string piano.

Such t imbral innovations can be viewed as part of the broader radical

trends - notably the move toward transethnicism - described above. But

they also precipitated a loosening of the traditional Western bonds

between nota t ion, execution, and perception: because the notat ion of

music for percussion or altered piano cannot be intrinsically linked wi th a

consistent (recognizable) t imbral result , the score begins to become inde-

terminate o f i t s performance. Equally, intonational issues come to the fore.

At this stage. Cage's radicalism was almost exclusively prospective: his

1937 lecture-manifesto "The Future of Music: Credo" is a typically bold

s ta tement of in tent , in many ways prophet ic of his later work (Cage 1961,

pp. 3-6) . Thus , in response to the perceived need for "methods of wri t ing

m u s i c . . . which are free f rom the concept of a fundamental tone," f rom the

First Construction (in Metal) (1939) until the early 1950s, Cage contained his

t imbral innovations wi th in a formal apparatus which - through its basis in

durat ion - was able to encompass both sound (whether pitched or

unpitched) and silence. (It should be noted, however, tha t this so-called

"square-root f o r m " is clearly derived f rom Cowell 's earlier formal experi-

ments, as typified in the United Quartet and Pulse) Square-root form

proved to be an extremely flexible resource. Cage was able to utilize it

when wri t ing for inst ruments both conventional and unconventional; i t

also made possible collaborative work: the percussion ({rnvtetDouble Music

(1941) was wr i t ten jointly wi th Harrison. More importantly. Cage could

adapt it to his changing aesthetic needs. His studies wi th Cowell notwi th-

standing, Cage's dependence on the prepared piano during the 1940s


might be as at t r ibutable to his poverty as to its transethnic timbres.

Equally, his involvement wi th Indian and o ther mystical philosophies was,

at first, as much therapeutic as cross-cultural in intent . But the discovery of

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna "led him to fu r the r immerse himself in

Eastern thought , " notably that of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and - ulti-

mately - Zen Buddhism (Pritchett 1993, pp. 36-37). As a result, Cage was

encouraged in the pursui t of an unusual quarry: "giving up control so that

sounds can be sounds" (Cage 1961, p. 72). In the Sonatas and Interludes

(1946-1948) Cage's taste - in the guise of "considered improvisat ion"

(Cage 1961, p. 19) - played an impor tan t par t in determining the progres-

sion of musical events; in subsequent works , however, such decisions were

increasingly devolved to impersonal processes. Thus in the Strin£ Quartet

in Four Parts (1949-1950) the musical material is restricted to a gamut of

thir ty-three sonorities, while in the first two movements of t he Concertofor

Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950-1951) the sounds are con-

tained on grid-shaped charts, about which Cage "made m o v e s . . . of a "^the-

matic nature ' b u t . . . wi th an 'a thematic ' resul t" (Natt iez 1993, p. 92). In

the final movement of the concerto - and most remarkably in the Music of

Changes (1951) - however, the moves were determined not by Cage bu t by

chance, through a process derived f rom tha t used to consult the ancient

Chinese book of oracles, the I Ching.

In January, 1950, Cage had wr i t ten to the French composer Pierre

Boulez that "The great t rouble with our life here is the absence of an intel-

lectual life. N o one has an idea" (Natt iez 1993, p. 50). Yet wi thin a year, his

situation had changed dramatically, as a result of his meeting the other

members of the so-called N e w York School - Mor ton Feldman

(1926-1987), David Tudor (1926-1996) and Christian Wolff (born 1934).

(The remaining member of the group - Earle Brown [born 1926] - joined

in 1952.) Cage discovered the I Ching - which would become his most

impor tant compositional tool - th rough Wolff, whose father had recently

published an English translation of the work. For the next few years, the

mutual interaction of the group led to a quan tum leap forward in musical

radicalism and a questioning of the most fundamental tenets of Western

art music. Although their individual methods and techniques were

inevitably qui te different, the principal feature that linked them was

identified by Cowell, who - prior to a concert of works by Brown, Cage,

Feldman, and Wolff - suggested tha t "here were four composers who

were gett ing rid of glue. Tha t is: Where people had felt the necessity to

stick sounds together to make a continuity, [they] felt the opposite nepes-


sity to get rid of the glue so that sounds would be themselves" (Cage 1961,

p. 7 1 ) .

The most obvious manifestation of the new glue-less music was its

visual aspect, Feldman being the first of the group to experiment wi th

graphic notat ion. Although graphic devices are occasionally found in the

works of Ives and Cowell, the score of Projection 1 for solo cello (probably

composed in late December, 1950) is unprecedented. The music is wr i t ten

on three systems, marked 0 (harmonic), P (pizzicato) and A (arco); wi thin

each system, relative durat ion and relative pitch range (high, medium, low)

are indicated quadrangularly. The appearance of the score is akin to that of

some abstract paintings; indeed, Feldman is reported to have sometimes

" h u n g " his composit ions while working on them (Patterson 1994, p. 72).

Earle Brown's collection of pieces entitled Folio (1952-1953) contains a

number of innovative notational devices. The most radical is found in

December ip^z, the score of which consists of a single sheet of card, approx-

imately Ag-sized, on which are drawn thir ty lines and rectangles of

different thicknesses and lengths. The sheet may be placed on any of its

four sides, and thus may be read in four ways. However, in later pieces

Brown drew back somewhat f rom this extreme position. InAvailable Forms

I (1961) and Available Forms II (1962) relatively conventional notat ion is

combined wi th a Calder-like structural mobility, the order in which the

various musical events are performed being decided by the conductor(s). A

similar degree of flexibility characterizes much of W o l f f s work f rom the

l a t e 1 9 5 0 S o n w a r d .

Following the composit ion of Music of Changes, Cage came to realize that

the adopt ion of chance freed him of the need for either square-root form or

traditional notat ion. Consequently, 1952 proved to be a remarkable year,

in which existing practices and new possibilities jostled for at tention: the

post-Feldman graphs ofImaginaiyLandscapeNo. 5 andMusicforCarillonNo.

1 are contiguous wi th the notational normality of Waiting and ForMC and

DT, while in two fur ther works . Cage leapt into the musical unknown.

Water Music inaugurates a series of pieces - including Variations IV

HPSCHD (1967-1969),Roaratorio (1979), and theEuroperas (1985-1991) -

in which the needs of music and theatre collide in of ten unexpected ways;

4 33 " opened up for the first t ime in Western music history the possibility

of unintentional sounds being considered as impor tant as intentional

(composed) sounds. Dur ing the remainder of the 1950s, Cage employed an

impressive variety of chance-based compositional tools in order to fulfill

fur ther his earlier-mentioned aim of "giving up control so that sounds can


be sounds." As well as the 1 Ckin£, these tools included the use of templates

of various kinds, and the identification and highlighting of imperfections

in the manuscript paper. One particularly radical result of Cage's new

approach to composit ion was that many of the works composed after 1951

could be performed either separately or simultaneously. Perhaps the mos t

remarkable produc t of this period is the Concert for Piano and Orchestra

(1957-1958), in effect a compendium of his compositional practices. I t

contains an astonishing selection of notat ions, for a pianist and thir teen

other instrumentalists, all of whom have an unprecedented degree of

control over wha t (and how) they perform.

Despite the wildly experimental nature of many of the N e w York

School's innovations, however, they were taken surprisingly seriously by

the European avant garde. In mid-1951, Boulez had wr i t ten that he and

Cage were at " t h e same stage of research" (Nat t iez 1993, p. 97). Sub-

sequently, many of the new ideas which characterized the work of Cage,

Brown, and Feldman during this period were adopted and adapted by their

European contemporaries - witness, for instance, the notational styles of

Circles (1960) and SequenzaIII(1^66) by Luciano Berio and the mobile form

of Momente (1961-1969) by Karlheinz Stockhausen. However, it should

also be noted tha t Cage and Brown, in particular, had enormous respect for

Boulez, and that Cage and Tudor were responsible for promot ing - among

other European works - the first American performances of Boulez's

Second Piano Sonata (1947-1948) and Stockhausen's Klavierstiick XI

(1956). Indeed, it is possible to argue that despite their many disagree-

ments, the N e w York School and their European avant-garde colleagues

actually shared quite similar aesthetic goals, which were resolutely

prospective in nature.

Tha t Cowell and Harrison were not significantly involved in this inter-

national avant-garde activity is noteworthy, for by the mid- i95os their

aesthetic values were markedly different f rom those of Cage and his

colleagues. Following his re turn to the West Coast in 1953, Harrison

increasingly followed Cowell 's lead in exploring the more retrospective

and extraspective facets of radicalism. Dur ing the 1930s and 1940s, Harri-

son had already studied world musics and wr i t ten for percussion and

altered piano; and as a result of reading the first (1949) edition of Genesis of

a Music by Harry Partch (1901-1974) he also became interested in tuning

systems and ins t rument building. These various tendencies coalesced

f rom the late 1950s onward: two early products are the Concerto in Slendro

(1961) and the Pacifika Rondo (1963). The latter work is scored for a


chamber orchestra of Eastern and Western instruments; the former - for

solo violin, celesta, two tack pianos and two percussionists - may be played

in either equal temperament , or in the two Javanese modes specified in the

score.

Harry Partch - w h o , like Cowell and Harrison, had a rather unconven-

tional musical background - had in effect abandoned Eurocentric art

music tradit ions some thir ty years previously. His early rejection of

Western intonat ion and performance practice led to his development of a

new intonational system, the building of inst ruments capable of per-

forming in that system, and the creation of an all-embracing aesthetic

viewpoint he termed corporeality. His work shows an unusually wide

frame of cultural reference, including Chinese poetry, hitch-hiker inscrip-

tions and Greek tragedy, in ijLyrics ofLiPo (1930-1933), BaretfTW (1941)

and Oedipus (1951) respectively. In the t r iumphan t synthesis of such late

pieces as Delusion of the Fury (1965-1966) Partch juxtaposes Japanese N o h

with Ethiopian folklore; the set consists only of his amazing instruments -

including kitharas, adapted guitars, and a variety of tuned idiophones -

while the performers are required to play, sing and act, mainly f rom

memory. However, the price Partch paid for such extraspective inde-

pendence was enormous: he received little insti tutional suppor t , and even

at the height of his creative achievement, in 1966, could wri te bitterly to

Harrison that " I w e n t to the social security offices yesterday, and learned

that the $538.20 check f rom the U.S. Treasurer is valid. I t is my reward for

having endured this society for 65 years" (Garland 1987, p. 60).

Since the 1960s

The extent to which prospective radicalism had become moderated by ret-

rospective and extraspective tendencies may be gauged by briefly examin-

ing a selection of Cage's music f rom the early 1960s onward. Variations IV

(1963) is designated as being " for any number of players, any sounds or

combinations of sounds produced by any means, wi th or w i thou t other

activities." The work is thus superficially (and outrageously) prospective

in its specification no t of substance (i.e. musical material) bu t rather of a

means by which the spatial sources of such substance may be determined.

As such, it is the embodiment of Charles Seeger's ult imate aim for dis-

sonant counterpoint - complete heterophony. Seeger's concept had been

of "a polyphony in which there is no relation between the parts except

mere proximity in t ime-space, beginning and ending, wi thin hearing of


each other , at more or less the same t ime" (Cowell 1933a, p. 111).

Significantly, though , Seeger's subsequent concession - that "He t -

erophony may be accidental, as, for instance, a radio-reception of

Beethoven's 'Eroica' intruded upon by a phonograph record of a Javanese

gamelan" - immediately introduces the possibility (if no t the inevitability)

of retrospective and extraspective elements being par t of such a phenome-

non. In practice, therefore. Cage's own recorded performance ofVariations

IV made extensive use no t only of the amplified " a m b i e n t " sounds (of

street , audience and radio) liberated by 4' 3 3 " , bu t also extant discs of a

wide variety of musics.

One of Cage's chiefinspirations for HPSCHD (1967-1969) was the music

of Mozar t ; Cheap Imitation (1969) paraphrases Satie (albeit in unusual

circumstances); Apartment House i j j 6 (1976), Some of "The Harmony of

Maine"' (Supply Belcher) (1978), and Hymns and Variations (1979) draw on

earlier American musics; the source of the series of Europeras is revealed

eponymously. In his use of such resources, Cage demonstrates a retrospec-

tive vulnerability shared wi th many other radical composers - Ives, for

instance, had evoked both his own and his father 's pasts through musical

quotat ion, while Cowell had f rom his teens onward imitated and alluded to

earlier styles. Since the early 1960s, however, such tendencies have become

increasingly common and, consequently, the distinctions between retro-

spective radicalism, traditional conservatism and - latterly - postmodern-

ism have blurred accordingly (see chapter 20). The third movement of the

(1968-1969) by Berio - w h o was resident in America f rom 1963 to

1972 - is of ten cited as a prime example of the polystylisni which may result ,

bu t there are many other contemporaneous instances, both European and

American, including Stockhausen's Hymnen (1965-1967; 1969) and the

Baroque Variations (1967) by Lukas Foss (born 1922).

Fur ther examples of retrospective and, especially, extraspective radical-

ism dur ing this period are found in the works of many composers, includ-

ing Pauline Oliveros (born 1932), Henry Brant (born 1913) and Lou

Harrison. Oliveros has increasingly sought to explore " the relationship of

the work to its larger social con tex t" (Taylor 1993, p. 388) - for instance in

Horse Sings from Cloud (1975) and Rose Moon (Pi^yS) - and has accordingly

of ten invoked the musics and aesthetic practices of other cultures. Brant 's

penchant has been for the spatial distr ibution of large forces. Meteor Farm

(1981) - like Variations IV, a comprehensive example of Seeger's complete

heterophony - utilizes an orchestra, brass groups, percussion groups, a

jazz orchestra, solo and choral voices, a Javanese gamelan, a West African


drumming ensemble, and a trio of South Indian instruments. Brant 's

musical materials and compositional methods are equally diffuse. Harri-

son, meanwhile, has consolidated his position as the doyen of extraspec-

tive radicalism. Since the early 1970s he has wr i t ten extensively for

Javanese gamelan and pioneered the building of, and composit ion for,

American gamelan. H e has continued to explore intonational systems

other than equal temperament and has produced a number of highly

successful t ransethnic works. For instance, in the Piano Concerto wi th

Selected Orchestra (1983-1985) the solo ins t rument is tuned to Harrison's

favorite Kirnberger No . 2 well- temperament and the orchestral instru-

ments follow suit , as far as is possible. Of the work ' s four movements, the

first, third and four th all show some Javanese influence; the second,

however, is titled Stampede and exuberantly combines Latin influences

with Cowellian tone clusters. More recently, Harrison has accomplished a

fur ther rapprochement - between transethnicism, Rugglesian dissonant

counterpoint , and other influences - in the polystylistic Symphony No . 4

{Last Symphony) (1988-1990).

The best-known incidence of extraspective and retrospective radicalism

since 1960, however, is found in the work of such composers as La Monte

Young (born 193 5), Terry Riley (born 193 5), Steve Reich (born 1936), and

Philip Glass (born 1937). The origins of so-called minimal music are

complex, b u t center around a hybridization of elements f rom the Eurocen-

tric, radical, jazz, and popular traditions. Thus Young - who has been

described as " the grandfather of [minimalism]" (Rockwell 1985, p. 113) -

already included very long held notes in such early serial pieces as For Brass

(1957) and the Trio for Strings (1958). After a brief period of ultra-Cagean

prospective radicalism. Young has since 1962 concerned himself wi th the

issues of jus t in tonat ion, drones, and improvisation. Young's long-toned

atonal music led to Riley's long-toned consonant music, including the

String Quar te t (1960). Subsequently, Riley's combination of repeated

melodic phrases and constant pulse - archetypically in In C (1964) - pro-

vided minimalism wi th its most recognizable trademarks; these, along

with the use of drones, are clearly related to the performance practices of

the Indian subcont inent . Reich's initial (prospective) experiments with

tape phasing - in It^s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) - were suc-

ceeded by instrumental works, including (1967), which echoed

Riley's enthusiasm for consonance and pulse. Subsequently, Reich has

supplemented his technique through the study of Ghanaian d rumming ,

Balinese gamelan, and Hebrew cantillation. Glass, meanwhile, in his


earlier minimalist work combined Indian additive and subtractive rhyth-

mic procedures wi th traditional Eurocentric scales and arpeggios. Even

more so than his colleagues, he used amplification and electric keyboards

in a conscious allusion to contemporary popular music practice.

As Glass has noted, "[by 1967] I would say there were roughly thir ty

composers working i n a very similar style"; among those he names are Phill

Niblock (born 1933), Frederic Rzewski (born 1938), Tom Johnson (born

1939)5 Terry Jennings (1940-1981), and Meredith M o n k (born 1943)

(Strickland 1991, p. 113). However, it is the music o fYoung , Riley, Reich

and Glass himself tha t has tended to monopolize scholarly and media

at tent ion. Of the four , Reich and particularly Glass migh t be considered to

have abandoned radicalism since the mid- i970s (see chapter 20) b u t Riley

and Young have remained t rue to their original precepts. Riley's album

Cflme/(i976;released 1980) consists of four solo improvisations, made

using a specially adapted electronic organ in just intonat ion wi th an elabo-

rate digital delay system. The music is cast in two basic layers - a back-

ground of interweaving, pulse-like ostinato pat terns, and a foreground of

freer, ornate, melodies. Young's self-confessed fanaticism has resulted in

his overall concept of the Dream House - " in which the composit ion,

performance, product ion . . . and performance space are integrated into

a single artistic experience" (Farneth 1986, p. 580) - and such visionary

meta-compositions as The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys (1964- ) and

The Well-Tuned Piano (1964- ).

Despite the predominance of retrospective and extraspective tenden-

cies, however, prospective radicalism apparently remained a poten t force

in contemporary music. By 1988, Conlon Nancarrow's series ofs tudies for

player piano(s) - commenced in the late 1940s - totaled around fifty. Some

degree of their complexity may be gleaned f rom the (relatively mild)

subti t le of no. 27 - "Canon - 5%/6%/8%/ i i%." The music of Brown,

Feldman, and Wolff continued to challenge convention in various ways.

Feldman's late works made extensive use of repetit ion and were of ten of

epic proport ions: Three Voices (1982) lasts ninety minutes , and For Philip

Guston (1984) four hours. Wolff 's pieces, meanwhile, became increasingly

indeterminate in nature. The 1960s and early 1970s were an impor tant

period for radicalism in all its guises and many composers disseminated

their work through specialized journals, including Source - Music of the

Avant Garde. Composers also took advantage of a new generation of per-

formers, both virtuoso and - sometimes - unskilled, in groups as different

as O N C E , Fluxus, Musica Elettronica Viva, and Speculum Musicae.


The experience of prospective radicalism after 1960 is best summarized

in the music of George Crumb and John Cage. Crumb works very much at

the (avant-garde) edge of t radi t ion, his composit ions of ten stretching

notational, instrumental , and technical resources to their limits. Several

scores - including Eleven Echoes of Autumn, ip6^ (1966) and Star-Child

(1977) - include circular notat ions somewhat paradoxically reminiscent of

Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Black Angels for string quar te t

(1970) is one of many pieces in which the instruments are amplified. Its

performers are also required to vocalize and to play maracas, tam-tams,

and water- tuned crystal goblets. In Vox Balaenae (1971) and Lux Aetema

(1971) the players wear masks; as elsewhere in Crumb 's catalog, extended

performance techniques are utilized. At all t imes, however, the aural (and

dramatic) results of these demands are wholly imagined. Wi th Cage, there

is if anything a greater expectation of performers ' virtuosity, as is evinced

by the unusually determinate Etudes Australes for piano (1974-1975) and

Freeman Etudes for violin (1977-1980; 1989-1990). In the majori ty of his

works, though, indeterminacy is assured via a plethora of graphic and

other experimental means, including uncontrollable inst ruments - the

plants and conch shells of Child of Tree (1975) and Inlets (1977) respectively

- and (fixed or flexible) t ime brackets. Examples of the latter include Thirty

Piecesfor Five Orchestras (1981) and the extended series of " n u m b e r " pieces

that commences wi th Two (1987).

After roughly a century of extreme radical activity in music, however -

both in America and elsewhere in the Western world - one might be

forgiven for wonder ing whether fu r ther development is possible. The

musical universe has been expanded to the poin t where i t contains (to para-

phrase the score of Cage's Variations IV) "any [or no] sounds or combina-

tions of sounds produced by any [or no] m e a n s . . . [and performed by] any

number of [or no] players." There can be no boundaries - and therefore no

forefront - in a universe as limitless as that predicated by Variations IV.

Thus the conventional view of radicalism - based solely on prospective

expansion, and roughly analogous to cosmology's big bang theory - fails

sufficiently to explain the realities of the contemporary musical situation

in which we find ourselves. A more plausible explanation - which can take

into account the effects no t only of prospection, bu t also of retrospection

and extraspection - lies rather in an analogy wi th cosmology's steady state

hypothesis, where " n e w " material is created no t intrinsically, bu t rather

through the infinite hybridic recombinations of existing material. We

used to move forward; after Variations IVwe. can only go round and round.

532- DAVID N I C H O L L S

Thus even the most attractive, or striking, new works - for instance

those of Stephen Scott (born 1944), Peter Garland (born 1952), John Zorn

(born 1953), or Gregory Walker (born 1961) - mus t inevitably be allusive

rather than elusive, referential (and reverential) rather than radical. Scott,

in his fur ther development of the altered piano, and Garland, in his of ten

lyrical wri t ing for piano and/or percussion, show the cont inuing influence

of Cowell, Cage and Harr ison, among others. Zorn ' s music is "wildly syn-

cretic . . . a typical Zo rn piece may move f rom Brahms . . . to pneumatic

drills to cartoon music to post-Ornet te sax wi th in half a minu te" (Strick-

land 1991, p. 125). Walker'sDream/"/. (1993) meanwhile, has been

described by its composer as the first rap symphony, and combines ele-

ments of hip hop wi th extended orchestral resources.

In Woody Allen's 1977 film Annie Hall, the schoolboy Alvy Singer

explains to a psychiatrist why he no longer sees any point in doing his

homework: "The universe is expand ing . . . Well, the universe is everything,

and if i t 's expanding, someday it will break apart and that will be the end of

everything." Has our musical universe broken apart , or rather stopped

moving altogether? Is Mor ton Feldman's view of Cage's work - that he

"stepped aside to such a degree that we really see the end of the world, the

end of a r t " (Feldman 1985, p. 92) - accurate? Have we truly reached " the

end of everything"? N o t even musical cosmologists can answer such ques-

tions wi th certainty; bu t wha t is clear is that the limitless musical universe

of Cage's Variations IV lies very close to the postmoderni ty which other

composers, f rom quite different traditions, currently espouse. The British

composer Robin Holloway could hardly be considered a fellow-traveler

wi th Cage: yet in 1989 his own perspective was that "Modernism is every-

one's immediate past: and any remoter past can only be reached through it.

Meanwhile, we have the present: infinite possibility, dislocated like a

wrecked mosaic that has been incorrectlyrestored"(Holloway i989 ,p . 66).

The contemporary musical si tuation in which we find ourselves need

no t be viewed quite so pessimistically as this, though. An alternative is

simply to try and accept it: as Lou Harrison once remarked in another

context " d o n ' t underrate hybrid musics BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THERE IS"

(quoted i n V o n G u n d e n 1995, p. 201). And there may even yet be two areas

of American music in which prospective radicalism continues to play an

impor tan t part (although it is significant tha t both areas involve interac-

t ion wi th o ther universes, one real b u t parallel, the other coextensive bu t

synthetic). The first (and less convincing) exists where music is joined

wi th one or more of the o ther arts, no t conventionally (as in opera, ballet.


etc.) b u t rather more idiosyncratically (as in music theatre, performance

art , etc.). Al though many precedents existed, the posr-1950 collabora-

tions of John Cage and Merce Cunningham (born 1919) had enormous

influence. Events like the Black Mountain College untitled event (1952)

stressed the potential independence of simultaneously occurring aspects

of a performance; Cage's Water Music (1952) allowed music and theatre to

collide in unexpected ways; o'oo" (1962) did for action w h a t ^ ' ^ j " had

done for sound; and almost all of Cage's scores for Cunningham's dances

were conceived w i t h o u t reference to the choreography (and vice versa).

This lead was followed avidly dur ing the 1960s, particularly by those asso-

ciated wi th groups such as Fluxus and ONCE. For example, La Monte

Young's Piano Piece for David Tudor #1 (1960) opens with the instruction

"Bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water on to the stage for the piano to

eat and dr ink" ; in Solo for Violin Viola Cello or Contrabass (1962) by George

Brecht (born ?i926) the performer polishes, rather than plays, his instru-

ment ; Kittyhawk (1964) by Rober t Ashley (born 1930) combines music,

movement , and theatre in an early condemnation of the oppression of

women. Since 1970, such multi-media theatricality has become increas-

ingly common: examples include Glass's collaboration wi th Rober t

Wilson, Einstein on the Beach (1976); United States (1983) by Laurie Ander-

son (born 1947); Ashley's P e j / e c i i f m (Private Parts) (1977-1983) and^ to -

lanta (Acts of God) (1982); Steve Reich's The Cave (1993); the work of

Meredith Monk , including the quasi-operatic Atlas (1988-1991); and

Pauline Oliveros's Nzinga the Queen-King (1993).

The second (and more promising) area of continuing radicalism is

electroacoustic music. Radical composers have, since the early years of the

century, enthusiastically explored the possible uses of electrical means,

both pure and in combinat ion wi th acoustic resources. By 1922, Varese

was already calling for "an ins t rument that will give us a cont inuous

sound at any pitch. The composer and the electrician will have to labor

together to get i t " (quoted in Ouellette 1968, p . 76). Typical early exam-

ples of such instruments include the theremin, developed by Russian

inventor Lev Termen w h o was resident in America during 1927-1938;

and the rhythmicon, buil t in the early 1930s by Termen to a design by

Cowell. Cage followed Varese in advocating "a music produced through

the aid of electrical ins t ruments" (Cage 1961, p. 3): among other works,

the Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) has parts for frequency discs, played

on two variable-speed turntables, while Credo in Us (1942) and Imaginary

Landscape No. 4(1^^1) utilize radios.


Since World War II a succession of major technical advances - notably

the development of magnetic tape, synthesizers, and computers - have

resulted in greatly increased musical possibilities. Pioneering tape pieces -

including those of Varese, Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990), Ot to

Luening (1900-1996), Cage, and Brown - were followed by the creation of

impor tan t electronic music studios at universities t h roughou t America.

Synthesizers - "integrated and self-contained system[s] for the produc-

tion of electronic music" (Schrader 1986, p. 31) - facilitated the composi-

t ion of influential works by Mil ton Babbit t (born 1916), Mor ton

Subotnick(born 1933), Jon Appleton (born i939) ,and others. Computers ,

bo th analog and digital, have been used as versatile and multifarious

compositional tools by such composers as Lejaren Hiller (1924-1994),

John Chowning (born 1934), and Roger Reynolds (born 1934). However,

it might be noted tha t many electroacoustic composit ions have tended to

concentrate on technical, rather than musical, matters; and, conversely,

tha t electroacoustic composers have been as prone as their acoustic col-

leagues to the temptat ions of retrospection and extraspection. Only if

electroacoustic music becomes the truly sonic art imagined by Varese - as

perhaps in the vast soundscape of Metropolis San Francisco (1985-1986) by

Charles Amirkhanian (born 1945) or the abstract , non-referential syn-

thesis of nscor (1980-1986) by Curtis Roads (born 1951) - will it be able

legitimately to claim the inheritance of prospective radicalism.

y! southampto - eprints · pdf fileavant-garde and experimental music ... organizations which...

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